The Mazda RX-7 is a sports car that uses a special type of engine called a rotary engine. It's known for being light and fun to drive, making it popular among car fans.
The Porsche 914 is a sports car made by Porsche that was produced in the 1970s. It's known for its distinctive look and good handling, which many car lovers appreciate.
The Toyota Corolla is a small car that many people buy because it's dependable and doesn't use much gas. It's been around for a long time and is known for lasting a long time without needing a lot of repairs, which is why many people like it.
Car
Skoda 135GLI
The Skoda 135GLI is a small car made in Czechoslovakia. It had a different engine layout than most cars, which made it interesting, even if it wasn't very powerful.
Skoda is a car brand from the Czech Republic that makes practical and affordable cars, and it's owned by Volkswagen now.
Term
K24
The K24 is a Honda engine that many car enthusiasts like to use because it provides good power and is reliable. People often swap it into other cars to make them faster.
The Volkswagen Jetta GLI is a sportier version of the Jetta, which is a compact car. The Mk1 is the first generation of this model, and it's known for being light and fun to drive.
The Volkswagen GTI is a sportier version of the Golf, which is a compact car. The Mk1 is the first generation of this model, and it's famous for being fun to drive and very popular among car fans.
The Toyota MR2 is a small sports car that has its engine located in the middle, which helps with handling. The Mk1 is the first version of this car, and it's loved for being fun and easy to drive.
An engine swap is when you take out the engine from a car and put in a different one. People do this to make their cars faster or to fix a broken engine.
The Honda Beat is a tiny sports car made by Honda that was sold in the early 1990s. It's known for being fun to drive, especially on twisty roads, but finding parts for it can be tough.
Car
Suzuki Forza
The Suzuki Forza is a small car made by Suzuki in the 1980s. It was turned into a race car, which means it was changed to go faster and be used on a racetrack.
Lexan windows are made from a special type of plastic that is lighter and harder to break than regular glass. They are often used in race cars to make them faster.
Foot pounds of torque is a way to measure how much power an engine has to turn things. More torque means the car can accelerate faster and pull heavier loads.
Mazda USA is the part of Mazda that sells cars in the United States. They help bring new models to American drivers and make sure they are available in the country.
The Tesla Model 3 is a type of car that runs on electricity instead of gas. It's known for being fast and having cool technology, like the ability to drive itself a little bit. Many people are talking about it because it's helping to change how we think about cars and the environment.
Welcome back to all the cars I've loved before your authoritative podcast on
automotive nostalgia. Where our guests are unique, each auto has an era and every car
tells a story. So you know, you know what time it is. Time to plug in, get a little
grease under the nails and slip on that favorite car theme t-shirt, hat or jacket.
And hey, you know what? We won't judge. If you've been wearing the same car theme t-shirt
for a week, I don't have a problem with it. I can't see you. It's gonna be wonderful. Hey,
welcome back to our listeners all over the world. You ready, Doug? This is my favorite part of the
show here. Do it. Welcome back, our listeners, in Lafayette, Louisiana. You know, I'm originally
from Louisiana, and we did a South Louisiana World Tour. I'm gonna say a couple of spring
breaks ago and went that just went all through South Louisiana, an alligator tour in the swamps
and went to the where they make Tabasco in New Iberia, Louisiana, total trip, lots of fun. And
hey, you got to pass through Lafayette to get there. So let's see a couple of places in Europe,
Lundberg in Lower Saxony. Try not to master this. Guttenberg, Vasta Guttelund County,
St. Michael's, Maryland, a little closer to home, Canyon Country, California,
Urschweil in Bern, and maybe the city of the day here is Cardiff. Cardiff in Cardiff. Why is
Cardiff fitting for the show? Well, the first three letters. First three letters say it all.
Cars loved, Cardiff. Now, if that, you know how sometimes they rename cities?
You know, if Cardiff ever wanted to become Cars Love for a day, I wouldn't mind. I wouldn't want
to be against it. So at this point in time, let's bring in Doug. How you doing, partner?
Do you agree? Love this shirt. Another Mazda shirt. Yeah, I'm running out of Mazda RX7 shirts,
so I'll have to get some more. You ever go to a dealership and you go right in and there are all
the nice cars here and then there's a glass case in the back with all the, you know, the hats and
shirts embroidered with the automotive, you know, emblem and that sort. Does anybody buy that ever?
Have you ever bought anything from there like that? Negative. I'm not saying it's not great
merchandise. I think it is. Always go back there, make note of it, and then I get, you know,
busy sidetrack looking at something else. So if you have ever bought anything from a dealership
in that way under that glass case, let us know. Fire off an email. Okay, so it's Christian at
CarsLove.com. Doug at CarsLove.com. But I've been told that info at CarsLove.com works just as good.
Is that correct? It is. Who is this guy info and when did he, when did we hire him? Oh, don't
pay. Does he make more than me? Just sign the check. Sign the check. That's it. All right. And
oh, wanted to mention the website. We got something new going on there through the magic of Doug.
So we have, you can send us photos of you and your favorite car and we'll put them on our
site and we have a bunch of photos there already. It's really neat. Yeah, we had the site redone
a little while ago and it's a carousel, right? So that's the tech term. So a picture is that
you'll see a picture of Doug and me or several pictures of Doug. But how about those pictures
of you and that old Jeep? Are they up there? No, no, I got to find those. Okay, I can send them.
I did put a couple pictures up of some track 914s from Dirk as well as
Oh, yeah. Legend. Guys, a legend. Dressed as a cone while he was
managing the hot pit at a Porsche track event. He is dressed as a cone.
Fantastic. Can't wait to see it. Can't wait to see it. So yeah, all right, carslove.com. Check it
out, especially the photo carousel. Hey, if you want some of your photos up there, just email them
We'll get them there. Also, if you like what you hear, please tell a friend it helps us grow
and leave a review wherever you get your podcast. We sure would appreciate it.
So I think that's all of the pre-flight stuff. Did I miss anything, Doug? Or is it time to talk
about how today's guest? Yeah, how did today's guest pull into our virtual garage? Yeah. So today's
guest named Nigel Tonacliff. Tonacliff, yeah. Funnest last name to say in a while, by the
by. Tonacliff. He came to us via, I guess I would say his PR person. Oh, yeah. You know,
the great thing is as the show's picked up and we've had more guests and we've gotten better
circulation, if you will, more downloads, we've had people coming to us. We're not always begging.
In fact, so yeah, lovely. So Nigel, welcome to the show. How are you today?
Doing awesome. Thanks for having me on. Absolutely. So where are you these days?
Where geographically are you on this planet? I'm on an island outside of Seattle called
Bainbridge Island, Washington. Love it. So, okay. So this might be the first show where we had
East Coast, we have West Coast, and we have Gulf Coast. So thrilling, fantastic. Thank you.
Welcome. And what is your project these days? What are you up to?
Yeah, I run a driving school called Coastline Academy and it is a whole lot of fun. I started
as a driving instructor and we built the business to be coast to coast. We're not in the Gulf Coast
yet, but we're coming. Well, I got a 15-year-old, so I need you here ASAP, man. And you know what,
my 17-year-old, my 18-year-old, my 20-year-old could use it too. So yeah, you definitely have
some repeat business here. And we were talking a little bit during the pre-show that, and that's
one of the things I like about this show, is it really unlocks memories and just transports people
back in time. I, in checking out your content and yeah, definitely check them out. We get
each other's coordinates in a minute. But if you go to his YouTube channel,
there's a lot of really great content. And I would just transport it back into high school
in the basement of a building, watching all these videos of what you should do during driving,
what you shouldn't. I can't remember if I went out with a driving instructor,
but I didn't feel very prepared for when I went and took my driving test. But
when I think about what your company does, it's really kind of the model of standardized,
modernized, evangelized. So you're taking all of these great teachings. And I think this is
brilliant. It's tailored per state. And you have these driving instructors that come out,
pick somebody up, and it's not in this old hoopty. It's not in this car from way back,
it's a late model car, all the technology, second break in the car, so the instructor's
involved, cameras. It's such a different experience. Can you talk about why that's important now?
Yeah, I think, I mean, learning drive has always been a big deal, right? It's challenging,
it's dangerous. But I think more often now, young people, they get really nervous about this.
And so anything we can do that makes this process something that's approachable,
something they're comfortable with, providing that content on YouTube and TikTok and such
like that to help get some comfort with what they're about to take on. And then showing up in
a new Corolla with a super friendly instructor, all of these things are things that kind of
break down the barriers for what it takes for a young person to kind of feel comfortable enough
to just embark on this journey. Fantastic. And how did the idea hit you that, all right,
you said you were a driving instructor. And what was the inception, the idea of,
I have to do this on a bigger scale. And was that hard or easy?
Yeah, I mean, so I think Steve Jobs has this great quote about you can only connect the dots
in reverse. So what actually happened was my co-founder and I decided we're going to start
this business coastline. And our mission was to eradicate car crashes. But the business we were
planning to start was actually a hardware business, we were going to make a hardware product for cars.
And that was, it was not working out, you know, we had a prototype, we were doing our go to market,
people weren't buying it, we're like, what are we going to do? And so we went back through all our
user research and we're just like, what are we, we got to pivot to something, what's it going to be?
And there was this common thread through all of these families experiences, families of new
drivers in the household that the learning to drive experience was just, it was like a
casually provided service, you know, a guy with a car or a small business that, you know, you got
to bring cash when they, you know, when you go to their office, you know, all these kinds of things
that. A ton of variability. And from variability, you inevitably get defects. Okay, that's, and
striving is one of the most dangerous things you will ever do on a daily basis, especially for
a younger person. Yeah, you sense that. Yeah, please. And so, you know, we thought, okay, maybe
we're going to do this. And so it just happened that like, I grew up being an instructor, not a
driving instructor, I ran a sailing school, I drove on the track, you know, I like, I had these
like little bits of experiences. So when we decided, okay, you know, we're actually going to pivot
and we're going to build a driving school, we thought, all right, well, I guess step one is to
get trained as a driving instructor and teach some young people how to drive. And so we started the
business with just us as the instructors and built it up bit by bit. And it was actually an
incredible experience, you know, I love that. I just, I love that time with these folks who are,
you know, they're coming in, they're kind of nervous, you know, how's this going to go? Like,
I finally took the step of signing up and I, I don't know. And then we worked them through
bit by bit until they have that aha moment. And then, and then they're off. And what's really
awesome now is I get to enable that experience for hundreds of thousands of kids. You know,
it's like, pretty cool. That that is great. Yeah, I know Doug wants their parents.
And I love you guys because I could not wait to let somebody else teach my daughter how to drive.
Well, I mean, there's, yeah, everybody brings a perspective, everybody brings a tip. Everybody's
got some, some little nugget of knowledge, especially driving that they can always move it
forward. I know Doug wants to get into the discussion here, but I just want to, for our
listeners, you got to check out coastlineacademy.com, coastlineacademy.com, great website,
ton of information, but also go to YouTube at coastlineacademy, coastlineacademy.
There's so many good videos here and that you can, and when my son gets home tonight,
my 15 year old, we're going to sit here and watch some of these videos together and spark that
conversation. And yeah, we'll do a few laps around the parking lot here until Nigel opens
a school down here, but all kind of great stuff here. So, and it's, oh, I don't know if I said
this before, but a lot of these lessons and a lot of the content is tailored by state,
which is really important because they're variations on a theme, but there are rules
you need to know nonetheless. So one of the videos is entitled winter, whether driving
tips to stay safe this winter season. Good stuff. I live in Florida. I haven't driven in the snow,
thank goodness, for years since I moved down from the mid-Atlantic. But now that my son is up there,
we need to talk about this stuff. Another great video, don't panic, steps to take after a car crash.
Really good stuff. Okay. I've been in a few recs, unfortunately, myself, but the video does
a good job of saying, look, you might be shaken, but you got to stop. You got to keep your wits
about you. You got to communicate. If you're hurt, call the authorities, wait for a policeman.
This is all good stuff. So talk a bit, Nigel, about how the YouTube channel started and how
you get content up here. I think it's just expertly done. Yeah. We started producing a little bit of
content in the very early days. We were experimenting with different things. We were, okay, what if we
put a 360 camera in the car and drove around? We got some drone footage and stuff like that.
And we thought, okay, this is going to be great. Everyone's going to watch it. But you know what
actually people care about is just someone explaining stuff. Yeah. So as we went along
and we got some of these just incredible instructors that just are excellent communicators,
really engaging, we're just like, all right, let's just do like 20 seconds for TikTok or
three minutes for YouTube. Just explain something that's helpful. And so that's a lot of what we're
doing now is just like these little snippets of something that's like, oh, how do you drive in
the snow? Boom. That kind of thing. And I think people, it's resonating with folks. Absolutely.
And these aren't two hour videos. They're just a few minutes of pop, like Nigel was saying. And so
I can't wait to sit down with my son and we can just kind of watch it together, spark the
conversation. What do you think about this? What do you think about that? And I guarantee you,
when we're out on the road and this thing happens to us, we're both going to be
thinking the same thing because we kind of started from here reading about it. What do you think,
Doug? I'm thinking I'm going to drag my daughter in front of YouTube and have her see the video.
It's good stuff. It's all good stuff. Yeah. She's already had her first accident, but it wasn't
it still shakes you. Yeah. Oh, she was crying. She called me. I just happened to be nearby.
But what do you do when you're away? Right? She's going off to college.
Absolutely. Yeah, good stuff. Good stuff. So I know Doug wanted to get in the conversation
here or are we ready to hop back into the time machine? Your call, your play. Yeah. Time machine.
We're going to have some fun. And I'm sure the RX7, whose shirt you're wearing,
has got a flux capacitor tucked deep somewhere inside of the car. So Nigel,
we're going to put you in the way back. Go 88 miles an hour. Let's talk about the first car
you ever owned. What was it and where did it come from? Yeah, my first car was a Skoda 135GLI.
It was a short-lived model that it was made in Czechoslovakia where, you know...
Oh, so it was made. I know it was a Czech company. It was made there too.
It was made there. Yeah. And it had more cardboard in the dash and door cards than other materials.
It was made for the masses, but it was actually kind of a cool little car. It's less than 100
horsepower, but mid-engine and just like super weird. And it was... One of my neighbors had this
and his parents had brought it from Europe. And so they had this for a while and they were
getting rid of it. I bought it for 500 bucks and I was so stoked. I saved this money myself.
I was 15 years old. I was like, yeah, I got my first car. Still about six months before I could
get my license and I was like, needed some work. So I brought it into the auto shop at my high
school where I was taking shop class. Nice. Started tinkering with it and everything.
And then just a few days before my 16th birthday, which was my first opportunity to get a license
in British Columbia, Canada, my brother totaled it. So never quite got to...
Dagger. So close.
I can feel the historical frustration from here, but I know Doug wants to geek out on the cars,
but I got to squeeze in on the Skoda. When I learned that that was your first car,
I got really excited because we went to Ireland last summer and Skodas were everywhere on the road.
Drove around the whole country. They're Renault's, Peugeot's, a lot of Skodas. No American cars,
obviously, but very sharp. So still smaller cars. I'm sure more than 100 horsepower now.
And so we looked into it and now Skoda is owned by Volkswagen. And I thought it was curious that
the product line Skoda is second in profit margin only behind Porsche in the Volkswagen
portfolio line of automobiles. So I thought that was interesting. Doesn't help you at all for your
heartbreak going back to the car being smashed up, man. That's a bummer. We never had a story like that.
This was definitely a pre-Volkswagen group Skoda. It was built to serve the USSR with just
cheap transportation. In the end. Did you ever dream about or have the thought to go buy one
and relive that? Or a more modern one, as Christian said.
Yeah. You know what? I totally and actually in trying to find pictures for this show,
you know, it's going back through memory lane and thinking about this, like, oh man,
that would be so cool. Like, what if I could get one of these, you know, mid-engine, put like a,
you know, K24 in there and like, wow, fun would that be. But they're exceedingly rare now. I don't
think they were meant to last that long. And actually, even though it was damaged, you know,
not like, it wasn't like crumpled in half. It just, it had enough damage that it was not worth
repairing a $500 car. Someone drove a thousand kilometers with a flatbed, picked it up and
towed it across the country because he was a collector. And so like, people were into these,
you know, there's still a there's still a few around, but it's, it's, it's pretty hard to
track one down. That's not full of rust. Yeah. Yeah. It just happened to be a neighbor.
Otherwise, you never would have known about it, right? In versus this guy who's going to travel
that far to pick it up and do something with it, right? Yeah. Make some good of it. Hopefully,
it's still on the road or lives on pieces of it have lived on in other Skotas, right? Do the
transplants. And speaking, speaking of transplants, but let's, let's talk about your second car, which
you actually had two second cars concurrently. Tell us about them. And I think one of them
did have many transplants. Yeah. So, so the immediate replacement was a Mark 1 Jetta GLI,
which was a really cool car. I would love to get my hands on, on one of those or a first
a Mark 1 GTI. It was just like, it had a lot of life to it, you know, not a crazy powerful,
but it was light and small and like just, it's just like a happy car. You press the gas and it
just kind of jumps the life. And so that was like really the daily. And around that time,
I also got a Mark 1 Toyota MR2. And that was like my enthusiast car. I was super into it.
And that went through five engines under my ownership. Starting with the first one very
soon after I bought it because it ran into oil. I want to say not my fault, but I feel like everything
is your fault. If it's your own car, you know, if it's, if it's leaking oil, that's, that's not,
you got to own it. And then just, you know, first in first engine swap I did was, you know,
a used engine from Japan, you know, they come in these big crates and it had,
it had like really loud ticking valves. As soon as I turned it over, oh shoot, okay,
I don't want to deal with this. I'm going to just pull it back out, send it back. They give me
another one, try it again. And over the, over the life we, we had to, we had to do a lot of work on
that car. Wow. That, that is, that is something. And yeah, guts, guts. And I guess the high school
shop class probably helped you quite a bit. Totally. Yeah. And the MR2, a Mark 1 MR2 is kind
of cool because to swap the engine, the easiest way to do it is to support the engine from the
bottom and then lift the car over up just with like a, like it use an engine lift, but you're
lifting the chassis and it leaves the engine behind. It's like, yeah, I mean, I didn't know any
different then, but now that would be a pretty funny way to do an engine swap. Yep. And you,
and you didn't have to take the transaxle out to do it, just engine only.
Yeah, exactly. You know, and it's kind of squeezed in there, but access wasn't terrible.
And yeah, it came out pretty, came out pretty easy. Yeah, that's cool. Yeah, that's the thing
about mid-engine cars, right? They can be difficult to work on. That's what's kept me from buying a
Honda Beat. Those are parts availability. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, just, just trying to work on it.
I don't know how you, how you do it. Yeah. So you've had so many cars, you were telling us in
the pre-show about your Suzuki when I asked you, what was your most dangerous car and why? So
if you could regale us with that story, it's a great story.
So I got this Suzuki Forza. It was a mid-80s and it had been built as a full-track car. So
it was roll cage, Lexan windows. The three-cylinder engine had been bored out and just used Subaru
turbo slapped on there. And it was this like, man, it was raw. No noise, deadening, everything
completely stripped, only one seat. Oh, wow. And it was just such a hoot. And if I was,
I would, I would instruct my students today that this is not like a really great way to...
Do as I say, not as instructor does. Yeah. And yes, your instructor has a past, but yes.
But it was just, it was so light because it was completely stripped down. I think we figured it
was probably around 1500 pounds around there. And I mean, it was no end of problems, right? I mean,
it was like way more power than this tiny little engine was supposed to take.
Through cooling issues, I blew two turbos on there. And each time the compressor wheel
would snap off and find its way into the muffler. And so we used to joke it had a twin turbine exhaust.
Made it all the way through. And you had that car in high school.
That was very beginning of college. Yeah. Okay. Gotcha. Right around the end of high school.
Yeah. Gotcha. How long did you keep that car for?
Probably about a year. You know, long enough that I had a lot of fun in it and then realized that,
you know, every third time you drive it, you got to fix something. It was like,
not super reliable transportation. Yeah. And which of your cars, and maybe it was the Suzuki,
got you into the track? Yeah, that was my first, no, my second Miata. I did an autocross
as a younger person, which was super fun with the, I had an NC Miata and the MR2s,
those I did autocross in, which was a lot of fun. But it was when I moved to California
and got the NB Miata that I sort of discovered the whole world of track driving. And that is
addictive. There's so much to learn. It's so intense. And yeah, I just love it.
And that NB Miata, which I think you told us you sold somewhat recently, about a year ago,
you did some work on that car too, transplant from a totally other company, let alone built in the
US, right? The engine. Can you tell us about that? Sure. Yeah. Well, so it started, it was a wrecked
car. So it had been written off and I got it in its damaged state, towed it to my place. I actually,
I did the work on it, living in San Francisco, I rented a storage unit that was like one of these
storage containers. And I put the car in there. And that was also my workshop, was like a, like a,
you know, 20 foot storage container, shipping container. So fixed up all the damage, started
driving it started driving on the track, started wanting more power. So first I turboed it.
Then I did a swap for this Chevy 2.4 liter Ecotech engine with just a tiny little turbo
that was that I added. Then I blew that engine, unfortunately. And then I did the same engine
but fully built, rods, pistons, fully port and polished head, like just the, just threw everything
at it and slightly bigger turbo. And that was an absolute beast. It was like 2,500 RPM. It was 500
foot pounds of torque. It was just a, just a monster. Yep. For the track, right? For the track. Yeah,
exactly. So my home track at the time was Laguna Seca. And, you know, you've got this uphill.
And so I was always just like, you know, I'm not that good of a driver, right? So, you know,
you just like, oh, if I just had more power, then when I go up this hill, I'll be able to, you know,
I won't have this like, you know, flat coming around the corner and then just thinking, come on,
go faster as all the Porsches pass you. You know, I was like, no, I want to go fast up that hill.
Yeah. And Laguna Seca was owned by Monster or still is? It was sponsored for many years. Yeah,
now it's the WeatherTech raceway. Gotcha. So it was good that the Miata was there and you got rid
of it and your, but you're no stranger to Miata. I own two. Sounds like you've owned at least two
at this point. I've had all four generations actually. All four. Yeah. And you're currently
on the ND, right? That's your current car. Yeah. And how does that compare to the other generations?
You know, it is, I feel like they really perfected it with the ND, especially the ND2 where,
you know, 180 brake horsepower, you know, it's not like this is not a super powerful car,
but that engine is great and it's just such a joy to drive. Everything is really in balance.
So I'm both tempted to start modifying it and also every time I get in that car, it just makes
me smile. You know, it's not super stiff. It's not super powerful, but it's just really enjoyable
to drive. And where I live, the highest speed limit is 35 miles an hour. So it's kind of like,
you know, it's perfect. Yeah. Yeah. Well, top down, it always feels like you're going faster.
For sure. Wow. Yeah. And this is the RF too. So when the top's up, it actually looks really nice
and it's a bit more dry. So yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The Targa, right? Yeah. Targa of the Miata. Yeah,
that's it. Yeah. That's a neat car. We had, actually, we had John Everett, who was a new product
launch manager from Mazda USA. And he had a lot to do with the latest ND, like doing comparisons
and working to launch that in the US. And he got to give some feedback back and he got to drive
like the last ND versus this new one before it came out and did it back to back just,
and wow, I could just imagine doing that. Great guy. It was so cool. I was listening to that episode
when I was driving my ND in this twisty sort of mountain road and I was just like,
it was, that was a joyous moment. All comes together. It all comes together. Joyous for us
to hear that story. Yeah. Yeah. That guy really knew his stuff and talk about just the dream job
where all of this guy's passions just sort of came together. And he had a smile on his face the
whole time we were interviewing. One happy dude, Doug. He was one happy dude. Yeah. Yeah. So what
is your, is the Miata your daily driver? I have, I've got a Tesla Model 3 and I've got a Ford Maverick
and so. Okay. Because I've got a kid and we've got stuff to move around. So I don't always get to
drive the Miata. That's it's sort of like the only car that doesn't have a real purpose in my
family. But you know, whenever I'm driving by myself or just with my son, we always take the Miata.
Yep. Awesome. Good deal. Good deal. All right. So, oh, let's see. Did we talk about the Oldsmobile?
How can we forget? No, we did. We did. We did. Sorry. Yeah, no, that's fine. Yeah. So as we,
as we, okay, that actually is the perfect segue there. As we guide the podcast gently
to the off rent Nigel, I have to ask you, speaking of what do you have against Oldsmobiles, man?
You know, I am just, I'm a small car guy. I just love the feeling of getting into it. Like,
I'm 6'2". You know, I'm not like a small guy, but when I fold into a little car and it's basically
just like, the car is just wrapped around me and you drive and it just feels like, you know,
just, it just wants to jump when you hit go and it wants to stop and hit stop and it turns
sharply, all that kind of stuff. I love that. So, getting into this big, huge Oldsmobile.
Just wasn't for you. Just wasn't for you. Like 15 degrees in each direction and it's just going
straight. It was a boat. Yeah. Those cars were just boats. Okay. So seriously on the way out here,
you mentioned shop class and we see less in, or for some reason I'm seeing a lot, maybe because I
have kids that are kind of moving towards after high school, what are we going to do? And so I'm
aware of it. There's so much more focus these days on trades, on trade schools, on alternate ways.
You know, college doesn't have to have to be, you know, the way to go. In other countries,
in Europe, man, at 15, you are an apprentice, right? Making skills, get a job like that. That's
a way to go. So I would like to hear if you can, your top three moments from shop class,
if you have them. What did you make? What are your member? Who was your teacher? Who were your
friends? Because you just, you know, your tech executive, I get it, but you just like to do
things with your hands. Yeah. I loved, I spent more time in shop class than anything else in high
school. Oh, wow. I found my way in, you know, because it was always open, which was cool. I
found my way in there all the time. Before school, lunchtime, after school, sometimes if,
you know, I just ended up, ended up there instead of another class. You know, learning to weld was
a really cool experience. Fantastic. Kind of the amazing thing was our shop teacher,
you know, yeah, he teaches how to do stuff, but there were, it felt like there were no guardrails,
and I'm sure that there were, but it was just like, okay, here's how you do it. Hold this,
you know, shield your, your face, blah, blah, blah. All right, now go. I'm like holding this
welder. I'm like, really? Like I just get to do this now? It's so cool. Fantastic. That was,
that was a top experience for sure. And, and then getting to work on my own cars, you know,
being able to just like have tons of space in the shop, you're like, oh, great, you want to bring
a car in? All right, roll it into the corner there. Like, you know, if it's going to be
more than two months, let me know, you know, it's got to be out of here before summer.
Uh, just go for it. I like that. Great memories. Great memories. Thank you for sharing that.
Well, we have come to the end of our time, Nigel, but I have to tell everybody very important mission.
And let's see, as Nigel said it in the beginning, let's eradicate car crashes. How do you do that?
How do you do that? How do you do that? You get them out, you get them on the road with
someone that knows what they're doing. And we just had a blast getting to know you Nigel.
Um, Coastal, oh, I'm sorry. The company is Coastline Academy. Check them out. Coastlineacademy.com.
He is Nigel Tonic-Cliff. Nigel, it was a distinct pleasure to meet you and have you on the show.
Thank you for your time and we wish you the best of everything. Thank you guys. Thank you.
Fantastic. You had just heard the high-revving, low-mileage, late-modeled, heard around the
world authoritative podcast on automotive nostalgia. He's Doug. Reach him at Doug at CarsLove.com.
I'm Christian. Reach me at Christian at CarsLove.com. He's Nigel Tonic-Cliff. Check him out.
And if you like what you're hearing, please follow and tell a friend. Help us grow.
Check us out at CarsLove.com. I am sure we'll see you at the next local car show, showroom,
race strip, car museum, or concord. We appreciate you're taking a laugh with us and we will see you next time.
About this episode
Nigel Tonacliff, founder of Coastline Academy, shares his journey from a $500 Skoda to multiple Miatas, highlighting his evolution as a driving instructor. The conversation dives into the importance of modernizing driver education, using late-model cars with advanced safety features, and creating engaging online content. Nigel discusses his passion for cars, his experiences with various vehicles, including a mid-engine Suzuki and a turbocharged Miata, and the significance of shop class in shaping his automotive skills. The episode is filled with nostalgia and insights into the driving experience.
Three days before his 16th birthday—days before he could finally get his license—Nigel Tunnacliffe's brother totaled his first car. The Skoda 135 GLi he'd saved $500 to buy. Gone.
Most people would give up. Nigel bought a Mark 1 Toyota MR2 and proceeded to blow through FIVE engines. Yes, five. The first one ran out of oil. The engines from Japan had ticking valves. The Suzuki Forsa track car with the Subaru turbo? Blew two turbos—the compressor wheels snapped off and ended up in the muffler (he called it "twin turbine exhaust").
But somewhere between the MR2 disasters and owning all 4 generations of Miata, Nigel discovered something: he loved teaching people to drive.
Today, he runs Coastline Academy—a coast-to-coast driving school on a mission to eradicate car crashes by modernizing how teens learn to drive.
In this episode, Nigel reveals: - The exact moment he realized his Skoda was gone (and his brother's role in it) - Why he swapped a Chevy 2.4L Ecotec engine into his NB Miata—twice - Building a 500 ft-lb turbo monster that he drove at Laguna Seca - Working on cars in a San Francisco storage container (his workshop when living in the city) - High school shop class memories: welding without guardrails - Why modern teens are more nervous about driving than previous generations - The hardware startup pivot that became a national driving school - What it's like owning all 4 Miata generations (NA, NB, NC, ND)
There's one detail about that Suzuki Forsa that Nigel says he'd never let his driving students replicate. For good reason.
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